It's Downie's latest, proudest project, and possibly his last. The songs, book and film tell the true story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Ojibwa boy who ran away from residential school in 1966 and died of exposure, 50 years ago on Sunday, trying to walk back home to his family, 600 kilometres away. Hamelin, set to an animated film based on a graphic novel by Jeff Lemire, who is to graphic novels today what Downie was to rock in the late-nineties. It's a collection of songs Downie wrote with Mr. He can change subjects faster than a hockey team can change lines, but he always has, and it's not clear that it's not intentional.ĭownie has been in Peterborough with five of the best musicians in the country – Kevin Drew, Dave Hamelin and Charlie Spearin of Broken Social Scene, Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies and Josh Finlayson of Skydiggers – to rehearse "It feels like it's all melding together," is how he sometimes describes his memory. Oh, God, you know, starts with a B," and on it goes, until finally someone says "Bathurst!" and Downie says, "Good boy!" and is so visibly relieved you would think his house had just been rescued from a flood. He has his hats made at Lilliput Hats in Toronto, "at College near, what's the name of that street, the one that's west of Spadina, but not as far as" – "Grace?" – "not as far as Grace.
You can see his scar, a sunken valley dropping down his left temple from under the ever-present fedora or ballcap. For the ultra-literate, hyper-word-conscious Downie, this is a cruel fate.
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Two craniotomies since last December to remove a glioblastoma multiforme in his left lobe, plus radiation and chemo, have left him with an unreliable one. On the band bus last Monday, halfway between Peterborough and Ottawa, Gord Downie is talking about reading and writing and listening to music, which means he is talking about his memory.
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